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There is one thing that matters in politics above everything else. It matters more than Brexit. It matters more than economics. The only thing that really matters is keeping our country intact.

The United Kingdom is our country. This is the way the word “country” is primarily used by everyone in the world. It means a sovereign nation state. A member of the United Nations. The place that is named on your passport. Our country. It is this that is threatened.

There are two possible outcomes next week. Either we get a Conservative majority, which will defend the UK and deliver Brexit, or we will get a Labour, Liberal Democrat and SNP coalition.

This Remain coalition would give us a second referendum on the EU, but there would not be a genuine Leave option. It would be a sham. I can’t think of a single prominent Brexit supporter who would campaign for Labour’s “Brexit” and the vast majority of Brexiteers would boycott such a fake referendum. We would end up back in the EU, but half the country would be there reluctantly.

The Remainers would have won. Their long rearguard would have succeeded. They would have reversed the result of the 2016 referendum, but there would be a price.

The cost that Labour and the Lib Dems are willing to pay to stop Brexit is that the SNP gain a second chance to destroy the United Kingdom. Unless the SNP get a firm guarantee that they will get a second independence referendum, they won’t support the Corbyn led Remain coalition.

I would like to see the SNP win as few seats as possible, but it won’t essentially matter, if the SNP win 30 seats, 40, seats or 50 seats, so long as the Labour or Lib Dem MPs who might beat them, end up working with the SNP to both deliver EU referendum two and Indyref2.

Every Labour, or Lib Dem MP might be the one that takes them over the line so that they can form a Government that will depend on SNP votes. The only MPs that can stop this are Conservative MPs.

If we get a Conservative Government, we’ll be out of the EU in a few weeks. The deal may not be ideal, but it is the only way we are going to be able to leave at all. No deal is not going to happen. It certainly won’t happen when we have a deal that is acceptable to the vast majority of Brexit supporters.

The Conservatives have been slightly ahead in the polls. But we know that opinion polls have been wrong before. There are no guarantees. Many seats are very close.

We need everybody to vote. Try to persuade friends and members of your family to vote Conservative. Explain what’s at stake.

If we can once get completely out of the EU, the SNP’s dream of independence will effectively be over. Independence would already mean years of austerity, because an independent Scotland would start life with an unsustainable deficit. But if an independent Scotland were in the EU while England, Wales and Northern Ireland were outside the EU, Scotland would be in a different trading bloc to its greatest trade partner, the former UK. This turns independence into a nightmare.

Boris Johnson can legitimately explain to the SNP that he will not allow a second referendum because the SNP promised in the Edinburgh Agreement that it would respect the result of the 2014 referendum and accept that it was decisive. They didn’t.

It doesn’t matter what the Scottish Parliament decides on this issue, because constitutional matters are reserved, and therefore Scottish independence is outwith the jurisdiction of the Scottish Parliament. There is no legal right to secession.

A Conservative victory therefore not only kicks a second independence referendum into the long grass, it also by delivering Brexit makes it progressively harder for the SNP to win it. As the UK diverges from the EU and as the EU becomes a still closer union, the SNP will be faced with a horrible dilemma. Do we leap into the EU and put a chasm between ourselves and our former fellow countrymen only to end up being ruled by Brussels and no more independent than Texas, or do we end up outside both the former UK and the EU having to negotiate trade deals with both of them?

A Conservative victory stuffs the SNP. But if the Conservatives fail to win a majority by even the slightest of margins, we could end up with the UK remaining in the EU, which would make it all the easier for Sturgeon to break it up.

The SNP are going to want independence whether we Leave the EU or Remain. But the EU guarantees that trade wouldn’t be a problem between an independent Scotland and the former UK, it also guarantees that the border will be open and that everyone has the same rights as before because everyone will remain an EU citizen. This is why the SNP are Remainers.

So, you have a choice. Either you vote Conservative and you help us defend the UK from those who hate it more than anything else, or you have Corbyn propped up by Sturgeon.

Just as the UK is beginning to recover from the last time Labour wrecked our economy, Corbyn would go on the biggest spending spree in modern history maxing out our credit cards until the markets raised interest rates on debts that we could then not hope to repay. He would then give Sturgeon the chance to apply the coup de grâce.

Let’s be clear. If the SNP won a second independence referendum the United Kingdom would cease to exist. I have no idea what the former UK would be called, but it certainly couldn’t be called United. Every war we have ever fought to defend our country would have been for nothing, we would have lost in the end, our country would be no more. It would be the exit of Britain. We would no longer be British because Britain would be partitioned. Think carefully about how you vote. Your vote for the Conservatives has never been more needed and has never been more important.

About Effie Deans

Effie Deans is a pro UK blogger who works at the University of Aberdeen. She spent many years living in Russia and the Soviet Union, but came home to Scotland so as to enjoy living in a multi-party democracy! When not occupied with Scottish politics she writes fiction and thinks about theology, philosophy and Russian literature.